Adobe Acrobat was originally created to enable electronic distribution
of documents. It was aimed at large corporations as a means to
create 'paperless offices.' For this purpose, Acrobat was just
one of several competing products and had no remarkable benefits
as compared to the competition. However, Adobe 'got smart' and
began giving away Acrobat Reader for free--and soon after, the
World Wide Web was established on the Internet. Finally, electronic
distribution of documents had a real reason for being--and Adobe
Acrobat was well positioned to take advantage of the new situation.

Still, Acrobat was developed for electronic documents. It was
not designed for efficient handling of printed documents--until
the release of Acrobat version 3.0. None the less, you will find
that many printers are not yet ready to deal with Acrobat files--but
the future of the digital work flow is based on Acrobat--so, eventually,
any printer working with digital files will be able to work with
(and probably prefer) Acrobat PDF files. To learn how to purchase
Adobe Acrobat, visit the Adobe
web site.

Book Publishers and PDF

Book publishers are generally well positioned to take early
advantage of Acrobat PDF files. The insides of most trade books
are still printed in one color (black), so the most difficult
aspect of PDF, color files, is not an issue. Still, Acrobat needs
to be 'set up' properly to get the best results for print publishing.

Advantages of Acrobat PDF

Most book printing is based on files output through a PostScript
driver. These PostScript files can be quite large. PostScript,
developed by Adobe approximately ten years ago, was never intended
as a means to exchange files, but was a 'page descriptions programming
language' intended to drive a printer. (Indeed, the combination
of Apple Macintosh computers, Adobe PostScript, Aldus PageMaker,
and (relatively) inexpensive laser printers set off the "desk
top publishing" revolution that is still reverberating through
the graphic arts, printing, and publishing industries.)

Acrobat PDF has clear advantages over PostScript. Distiller,
the PDF file creation program, processes the base PostScript file
and simplifies it to specifically describe the pages. PostScript
has commands that 'flow through' the whole document that eliminates
the possibility of interrupting a job and 'fixing' an individual
page--the whole PostScript document must be resubmitted. PDF is
'page independent.' No page depends on commands that may have
been made globally or were on another page. PDF allows font embedding.
PostScript files must have the font installed on the computer.
PDF files are quite compact as compared to PostScript files.

The process

First the document is prepared in a professional page layout
program (Quark Xpress, Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Framemaker, or Corel
Ventura) then the file is 'printed' to disk or saved as a PostScript
file. Next, the PostScript is 'distilled' with Acrobat Distiller
to create the PDF file. To include any changes made to the original
document in the 'parent' program, you must repeat the steps of
creating the intermediate PS and distilling the PDF file.

Acrobat consists of various parts: Reader (available for free)
that allows you to view and print a PDF document. Exchange, that
allows editing of PDF documents. And Distiller, that creates PDF
documents from PostScript files. Another PDF creation utility
is also available, called PDF-Writer. Writer was developed to
create PDF files from 'simple' word processors and was often bundled
with such products. It will not create usable PDF files from professional
page layout programs and it will not create PDF files that print
with the highest possible quality--in other words, avoid PDF-Writer
for professional work.

Adobe PageMaker has a 'create PDF' selection on its file menu.
This is a trap for the unwary--it's intended for Internet-low
resolution files. To create high quality files for print reproduction,
you must use the 'print' command and select the 'Acrobat' PPD
(Printer Personality Description) then "print to disk"
to save the document as a PostScript file. You will need follow
a similar procedure with Xpress, Framemaker, and Ventura. A
PostScript printer driver must be installed (use LaserWriter
driver 8.5.1 on the Macintosh and the latest available PostScript
driver for Windows computers) even if you do not have a PostScript
printer.

To print out a PDF file, you use Acrobat Reader or Acrobat
Exchange. If the file was distilled with the appropriate settings,
Acrobat Reader will print the file at the highest resolution that
the output device is capable. If you are using a computer with
a non-PostScript printer, you need to install Adobe Type Manager
to get accurate PDF output.

Note: The following suggestions
cover setting up Acrobat Distiller 3.0. Acrobat Distiller
4.0 and later has included easier controls and "sets"
of default settings to assist proper set up of the program. You
should always check with your printing service provider for their
specific recommendations. Action Printing has sponsored a
web site, CreateAPDF.com
with simplified instructions for setting up versions 4 and 5 of
Acrobat Distiller. The following discussion is considerably more
detailed.

Setting Up Acrobat Distiller

Obviously to use Adobe Acrobat Distiller, you must have a copy
of the program. It is available separately as a stand alone application
and is included on the CD with Adobe PageMaker and may be available
bundled with other Adobe products.

Start with Job Options - General

Open your copy of Adobe Acrobat Distiller. From the menu "Distiller"
menu, select "Job Options" to open the dialog box. Select
the "general" tab if it is not immediately displayed.

As shown in the image, select "Acrobat 3.0"
as the Compatibility. This option gives the option of more
advanced image compression settings which are beneficial in reducing
the PDF file size for transportation and ripping (Raster Image
Processing). A smaller file is processed faster. (Versions 4.x
and 5.x you may select Acrobat 3.0 compatibility if you know that
a potential receiver of the file does not have a current version
of Acrobat Reader or the full Acrobat program. For files going
to printers and service bureaus, "Acrobat 4.0" compatibility
is the usual choice.)

Do not select the checkbox "ASCII Format"
as that will create a much arger file. This setting is only helpful
if you wish to open and examine the file in a text editor.

In the Device Settings, enter the resolution of the
targeted output device. The value you enter affects only vector-based
(object-oriented) EPS files which might contain device resolution
dependent elements, such as gradients or blends. 2400 or 2540
are relatively safe settings for print output. Most trade books
would be output at 1200 or 1270 dpi. A higher number won't affect
the quality of the output file.

Default Page Size: Most high-end application programs
(such as Adobe PageMaker or Quark Xpress) include a paper size,
so you can ignore this setting. However, many word processors
and other applications only reference a page size, which you must
enter here. Normally you might use 8.5 x 11. The value entered
in the figure represents a 'letter-extra' page size used by our
targeted output device. You should select a page size supported
by the final output device. Incidentally, the 8.78 inches
would become 632 points (actually making 8.77 inches) when distilled,
not 632.16 points as calculated mathematically; Distiller rounds
measurements to the nearest point. (The slightly oversize page
is "Letter Extra" common on many high resolution output
devices.)

Now select the tab marked:

Compression

The compression tab displays the controls that affect file
size and image quality.

Select "Compress Text and Line Art." This
is the default and may be preselected. Compression of text and
line art (vector EPS graphics) uses a "loss less" method
and will not affect output quality, but will reduce the file size.

Set Color Bitmap Images and Grayscale Bitmap Images
to Downsample to 400 dpi. This creates the standard for
the amount of image to be included in the PDF file. For example,
if an image has been scanned at 300 ppi (points per inch) then
scaled down to fit a layout, the actual image resolution is increased
accordingly. The downsampling option will correct these situations
and create a smaller, more efficient Adobe PDF file. Do not
use the Subsampling option as that will generate a lower
quality image. Subsampling is appropriate if you wish to create
a FPO or proof image only. Subsampling causes a significant loss
of sharpness and detail in the image.

Note: if you are preparing a file for black and white
output, you should convert your color images to grayscale in
Photoshop or a similar program before you distill your document.
In this situation the color information only enlarges the file
size and the 'automatic' grayscale conversion done by the output
software may give inferior results.

Set Automatic Compression to ZIP/JPEG Low. In this case
low means high-quality by applying only a 'low' amount of compression.
JPEG is a 'lossy' compression method that discards some information
from the image during compression. The low setting will not reduce
the image size, but will also not 'damage' the image. JPEG Medium-Low
and Medium compression may also generate good results depending
on the image content. Highly detailed images can afford less 'image
loss' caused by the higher compression settings, so some experimentation
may be required to find the optimum setting for your content.

For Monochrome Bitmap Images select Downsample to
the resolution of the target output device (in the example
1200 dpi is used). Again, this is to adjust scanned images that
may have been reduced in size resulting in "oversampling."
Since all compression choices for monochrome images are loss less,
select CCITT Group 4 to achieve the smallest file size.

Note: Distiller also supports loss less ZIP compression for
images, but this usually results in much larger PDF files. Use
the loss less ZIP compression choices only when absolutely necessary.
(Keep in mind the kind of images, the printing process to be used,
the line screen setting, and the paper type being used. e.g. a
Docutech only supports an 85 lpi screen, so the image quality
will be somewhat less than standard printed books (that usually
use a 133 line screen). Images printed on uncoated paper stock
will be less sharp than images printed on coated paper.)

Now select the tab marked:

Font Embedding

Font embedding is used to specify which fonts are included
in the PDF file to prevent font substitution at print time. Distiller
never embeds the 'standard 13' fonts (Helvetica, Times, Courier,
and Symbol font families) because they are available on all PostScript
devices.

Select Embed All Fonts so that Distiller includes all
the fonts used in your document in the PDF file. Select Subset
Fonts below and specify 99%. With this option Distiller includes
only the characters used in the document for each typeface and
renames the subset fonts in the PDF file to prevent an available
font with the same name from being used at print time. This
ensures that any customization to your font (such as kerning tables)
will be used and reduces the chance of other unexpected results
caused by an unintended font substitution. This option, however,
does prevent last minute editing (by the print service) using
the Acrobat Exchange 'touch-up' tool. (There are work arounds
to allow 'touch-up' tool edits, but then the font embedding information
is lost requiring the original font(s) used to be installed on
the computer(s) processing the document.)

(In Versions 4.x and 5.x, the "subset" value can
remain at the default 100%.)

Now select the tab marked:

Advanced

The default options listed under the Advanced tab are
tailored for online documents. You must make sure that you
select the appropriate options for your print documents. These
options affect the images in your document whether you are distilling
for online or for print.

If your document includes Spot Colors, select the
"Distill with prologue.ps/epilogue.ps" checkbox.
Then move the "prologue.ps" and "epilogue.ps"
files from the high_end folder in the Xtras folder to the folder
holding the Acrobat Distiller 3.0 application (Macintosh) or move
them from the Distillr/Xtras/High_end directory to the Distillr
directory (Windows). Distiller uses these files to include spot
colors in the PDF file instead of converting the spot colors to
process colors. (See the Acrobat Distiller 3.0 Online Guide for
more information about this topic.) If you do not have Spot
Colors in your document, leave this box unchecked.

Note: Some designers using spot colors will set them to Cyan,
Magenta, or Yellow, so that the normal CMYK separation will be
used. In this case, the spot color(s) will be output on the C,
M, or Y plate rather than a plate named for the spot color. As
long as CMYK colors aren't also used in the project it's a safe
way to avoid some complexity in getting the print drivers to output
plates as expected.

Deselect the Convert CMYK Images to RGB. This option
'undoes' the work you had to do in Photoshop to convert your images
to CMYK in preparation for printing. Failing to select this checkbox
is likely to cause your color images to be incorrectly separated
on the imagesetter.

If you are using the Open Press Interface (OPI) to substitute
final hi-res images for the images included in your document,
then you need to select "Preserve OPI Comments."
If you did not 'embed' all images in your original document
you will need to use this option. It doesn't hurt anything if
you select it, but have no OPI comments to preserve. (Some printers
need to have "Preserve OPI Comments" deselected due
to output problems with particular high resolution devices. Be
sure to consult with your printer before generating a PDF for
their use.)

Select the "Preserve Overprint settings" checkbox
to include any overprint setting included in your document.
You may not be aware of making any such selections, but it is
wise to select this option to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Likewise, select the "Preserve Halftone Screen Information"
checkbox if you have set any special screening attributes.
If you haven't made any such selections, then this checkbox will
have no effect. Caution: if you experimented with custom halftone
settings, be sure you have them set as you wish or have reverted
them to their default condition before distilling the document.

You can apply, remove, or preserve the Transfer Functions
and Under Color Removal/Black Generation information from
your original PostScript file in the resulting PDF file. We suggest
Remove in both cases. By choosing the Apply option, the
options are applied to the PDF file and are viewed on-screen.
However, once these options have been applied, they are
not included in the PostScript print stream from Acrobat.
To include these options for final print production, you must
select the Preserve option. It is best to consult with
your commercial printer regarding these options. Since these options
are somewhat dependent on the printing press used, it is generally
best to Remove these functions. (The printer will be able to select
the specific function values when the file is processed on their
imagesetter.) These functions apply to color material and have
no effect on plain black and white files.

In the Color Conversion section, select Unchanged
to ensure no color conversion takes place. However, device-independent
colors that do not map directly to Calibrated RGB or LAB are converted
to LAB. For more information about the other color conversion
options, see the Distiller User Guide.

Suggested Reading

There is quite a lot to learn about using PDF in an all electronic
work flow. If you want to learn more, I suggest reading "PDF
Printing and Publishing" (2nd Ed.) by Frank Romano with
Andersson, Eisley, Howard, Witkowski, and Jahn; published by the
Agfa Division of the Bayer Corp. with bookstore distribution by
Micro Publishing Press. ISBN 0-941845-22-2